Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is traveling to Washington to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden and deliver a speech to Congress on Dec. 21. Zelenskyy will be happy Ukraine is slated to receive a Patriot air defense battery, one of the United States’ most valuable surface-to-air missile systems.
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The Patriot is highly advanced and can take out targets from long distances. Zelenskyy has been pining for it.
No Quick Fix
Patriot is an acronym for “Phased Array Tracking Radar for Intercept on Target.” The battery can help Ukraine shoot down ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones, and fighter planes.
The U.S. military had been reluctant to donate the Patriot system, but Russia’s continued bombing of critical electrical and water infrastructure convinced the Americans to do it.
There are eight truck-mounted launchers for each battery, and the launchers can hold four interceptors. A phased array radar is included in the battery, and a control station with a computerized fire control system and various generators powers the Patriot. Some 90 soldiers maintain the battery, but three soldiers can operate the fire control unit.
Ukrainian personnel will train in Germany for its operation.
The Patriot will not be ready for awhile. It takes a long time to deliver the system and prepare soldiers to fire it, and all told it might be 10 months before the Patriot is operational in Ukraine.
The United States had previously sent Patriot batteries to Poland, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Among other customers, Germany, Japan, and Israel have bought the system.
The Patriot system has been in use since Operation Desert Storm. More recently it has operated in the conflict in Yemen, where it intercepts ballistic missiles fired by Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
Patriots Are Effective and Not Cheap
The Patriot radar and target tracking system can handle a maximum of 50 bogeys at once that are flying up to 62 miles away. Once the target is within some 9 miles, the interceptor launches and streams toward the enemy missile or aircraft. The missiles have a high fragmentation warhead that weighs almost 200 pounds.
Newer PAC-3 interceptors operate under a “hit to kill” mode rather than fragmentation.
Patriots are made by Raytheon. They were originally meant to take out airplanes, but the batteries were modified in the 1980s to handle ballistic and cruise missiles as well. The launchers cost around $10 million each, and the interceptors are $4 million.
The Patriot is much more advanced than the HAWK air defenders the United States has previously donated to Ukraine.
The expense of the Patriot interceptors likely means that the Ukrainians will save them for use against ballistic and cruise missiles, rather than targeting the Iran-made drones and loitering munitions that are being used against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.
“Firing a million-dollar missile at a $50,000 drone is a losing proposition,” said Mark Cancian, a senior analyst from the think tank CSIS, who was interviewed by the Associated Press.
A Boost to Defenders
The Patriot battery will likely be deployed around Kyiv, but any single battery will only be able to protect a small part of the city. Patriots are usually deployed in a battalion of four batteries that allows for better coverage.
Their delivery and operability will not be immediate, and Kyiv and other cities need protection now.
But this is also a symbolic gesture that shows how the West, and particularly the United States, is willing to send its best military hardware to thwart Moscow’s ambitions.
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Author Expertise and Experience
Serving as 19FortyFive’s Defense and National Security Editor, Dr. Brent M. Eastwood is the author of Humans, Machines, and Data: Future Trends in Warfare. He is an Emerging Threats expert and former U.S. Army Infantry officer. You can follow him on Twitter @BMEastwood. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and Foreign Policy/ International Relations.
Friend
December 21, 2022 at 2:15 pm
Russia is poor and because it’s poor it’s got KGB who want to be rich.
It is extremely poor. It’s unable to sustain itself, so its army has to be fed by plunder and murder
I’m appalled at the fact that you ever wanted to fight a war with a country that’s less than 1% of U.S. in generated wealth, and whose only goal was to flee to the United States. It’s beyond belief, and so is your lack of brain in the Republican party
Cheburator
December 21, 2022 at 8:56 pm
The richest country in the world is the one with empty store shelves. or in which there is a shortage of diapers? Wealth is an artificial convention, created thepumping cheap liquidity.
And now the question is – what will happen to liquidity with high inflation? The Fed is already withdrawing billions of dollars a day from circulation in order to somehow stop inflation.
The question is – what will happen when it is no longer possible to hide the decrease in liquidity in the market?
You will probably pay a bag of dollars for a burger, not counting?
B Arnold
December 22, 2022 at 8:04 pm
Glad you mentioned the 4 million dollar per interceptor missile (how many kids would that money send to college?).
What you didn’t mention is the up to six month delay in deployment needed to train the Ukrainians to use it.
This site is a haven for pro-Ukrainian propaganda. Wish people would tell the whole truth even when it doesn’t suit their narrative.